PHP Alphanumeric RegExp with letter from any language

[Marius]

I am trying to write a Regular Expression that makes sure the characters are all Alpha Numeric, and that accepts other characters as well. I would like to accept letters from other languages: áéíñóúüÁÉÍÑÓÚÜ and @.+-.
To accept all alphanumeric characters, and the symbols @.+-. I use the expression:

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if (!preg_match("!^[\w@.-]*$!", $str)) {
  echo 'error';
} 

Now I want to grab the characters áéíñóúüÁÉÍÑÓÚÜ as well. When I use the expression:

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if (!preg_match("/[\wáéíñóúüÁÉÍÑÓÚÜ@.\+-].*/", $str)) {
  echo 'error';
}

It does not seem to work, could anyone please help?

Hi,
Your regex ^[\w@.-]*$ won't match the accented characters. That is \w would match only the English alphabets, digits 0-9 plus the underscore symbol.
- \p{L} matches any kind of letter from any language
- \p{N} matches any kind of numeric character in any script.
- The + after the char class would repeat the previous token one or more times. I suggest you to use + instead of * because * repeats the previous token zero or more times. So it matches empty strings also.

You must need to include the unicode modifier u, so that it would make \p{L} to match accented characters.
Regex to accept all alphanumeric characters, and the symbols @.+_- and space.

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if (!preg_match("/^[\p{L}\p{N}@ \+._-]+$/u", $str)) {
  echo 'error';
}

Or try this RegExp:

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/^[A-z0-9 áéíñóúüÁÉÍÑÓÚÜ@.\+_-]+$/u